wahenga.alerts

wahenga.net promotes awareness and advocacy
on social transfers and social protection
in southern Africa

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This website aims to reach a wide and diverse audience and to encourage that audience to engage in the hunger and vulnerability debate by promoting awareness, understanding and advocacy on social protection and social transfers, as well as build knowledge and understanding of the multi-dimensional character of poverty, hunger and vulnerability across southern Africa.

In Focus

Often the debate over social protection and its provisions falls outside the purview of implementation. Technology and its effects often occupy this realm and leaves the debate to "techies" rather than programme advisors. This abstract looks at the intersection of technology and social protection, making a call for collaboration rather than competition.

The need to enhance ownership and accountability in Social Protection mechanism is paramount to ensuring social justice and equity among the citizenry. A process owned by a people enhances accountability, efficiency and sustainability of a programme and in this case of Social Protection programmes. It is this thinking that informed the Africa Platform for Social Protection (APSP) the participants thinking during the Annual Delegates Conference in Munyonyo, Uganda, that led partcipants to aptly come up with the theme for the Peer Exchange and Learning events for 2013. The theme chosen was "Grassroots Participation in Social Protection"

SASPEN, the Southern African Social Protection Experts Network, and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) are holding a meeting on "Social Protection for those working informally - Social and income (in)security in the informal economy". The meeting will also set the stage for the official launch of the SASPEN network.

The Cash Dividend: The Rise of Cash Transfer Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, a new book soon to be released by the World Bank, assimilates results of a thorough review of the recent use of cash transfer programs in Sub-Saharan Africa. It paints a picture of the evolution and current state of cash transfers, which include unconditional and conditional cash transfers and emergency- and development-focused transfers, and describes broad trends in design features and implementation, including objectives, targeting, benefits, payment mechanisms, conditions, monitoring, evaluation, institutional location, program costs, and more. It also addresses political economy issues relevant to cash transfer programs, discusses the challenges to implementing cash transfer programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, and highlights lessons learned from existing African cash transfer programs. The comprehensive nature of the review, and its thorough analysis of previously unassimilated data, fills a gap in knowledge related to cash transfer programs in the region. To pre-order the book, click here.

As the original creator of Wahenga, the Regional Hunger & Vulnerability Programme (RHVP), fades into the mists of history, so Wahenga passes to its new owner, the Africa Platform for Social Protection. Nicholas Freeland, RHVP Programme Director, says farewell...

Read Nicholas's final RHVP Comment here for more on this exciting transition!

Wahenga Comments

As the original creator of Wahenga, the Regional Hunger & Vulnerability Programme (RHVP), fades into the mists of history, so Wahenga passes to its new owner, the Africa Platform for Social Protection. Nicholas Freeland, RHVP Programme Director, says farewell...

As RHVP draws to a close, a recent assessment of the Programme, facilitated by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), attempted to learn lessons about the degree to which RHVP had influenced social protection policy over the six years of its lifetime. Two things are clear: we may have rocked the boat and ruffled a few feathers, but when all is said and done, we have also made a significant and positive contribution to the social protection debate. Our Programme Director, Nicholas Freeland, takes advantage of the opportunity of the lesson-learning report to pen a valedictory comment, and to thank those that we have worked with ... and tangled with ... over the years!

PMT is a curse! Sisters, you all know that: inescapable, debilitating, emotionally draining, a regular cause of extreme irritability!
But I refer here not to Pre-Menstrual Tension, but rather to a new form of PMT that is sweeping the globe: Proxy Means Testing. This variant of PMT is a method of selecting poor people to become beneficiaries of social transfer programmes, currently being advocated strongly by, among others, my good friends at the World Bank. But a recent paper, Targeting the Poorest, suggests that the reality is very different, and cautions policymakers strongly against the dangers of being steamrollered into the adoption of PMT. It suggests that the PMT approach is demonstrably deficient in many areas. This Wahenga Comment outlines those deficiencies.